


A Place Where We Belong

by ShadowThief78



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Don't Post To Another Site, Don't copy to another site, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Gen, I will not pay for your dentist bills, It's just fluff I guess, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-19 05:22:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19968706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowThief78/pseuds/ShadowThief78
Summary: Once upon a time, a houseful of boys had a place to call home.





	A Place Where We Belong

Once upon a time in a ramshackle house just down the way, a handful of boy spent their days together.

The house was old, patched and repaired like a much-loved old quilt, put together from the scraps and leftovers of the world.

In the scruffy front yard grew a huge tree with craggy chololate bark they held a multitude of insects and cobwebs, the reaching branches full of leaves and singing birds. The largest one was the backbone of a tire swing. The smallest liked to tear out, leaping down the crooked walk, and leap onto the swing. The one who tended to the garden would then set him to work mulching or watering.

A snarl of roses grew in the corner, the colors of dusky fire and clean, dry clouds, all mixed up with peonies that could make a soft and fluffy skirt if anyone wanted a dress the color of the first of Dawn’s gold fingers.

The walk was a hodgepodge of stones just like the residents were a hodgepodge of boys, they could never agree on whose was whose. The one with hair of the sun claimed the reddish one with a dog print, but so did the tire swinger. The tallest didn’t care, but his cowlicked shadow insisted his was the plain gray one that got nice and warm on summer afternoons. And everyone said that the white one was for the one with eyes that shone like stars, as big and brown as a doe’s, but he though it should belong to the leader.

The porch had four steps going up, but four is unlucky, so the leader nailed another one in frone, a half-step, really. It held an apartment of spiders and a few milipedes and beetles under it’s crooked surface and lopsided nails.

The door is a bright red with a little window at the top, a shiny gold doorknob and mail slot, even though there’s a mailbox by the street.

There were two big, wide windows that let the sun sneak in every morning when they weren’t stoppered up with cheerful green curtains. Strips of wood coated in flaking white paint ran across both of them, the one one the left a snapshot of the kitchen.

The kitchen had a wide counter and tall stools under it, perfect for sitting and watching or licking the bowls when cookies were made. The sink was metal, big and deep, scrubbed clean every Monday by the cook. The tap wasn’t leaky, not anymore after the biggest fixed it and sprayed himself with cold water in the process.

The dining room is were the eating happens. At the center of the room is a long, solid table made of warm wood by a friend of the smallest and crammed with chairs. On the walls are pictures, pasted over each other, of them and those who came before.

The living rom is for when life spills over from the kitchen and overflows from the dining room. All around it are couches and soft pillows, blankets ares bigh you could drown in. There is one table, a low thing set a bit back from the firteplace to make space for comany on winter nights when they toast marshmallows and drink cider and talk until the stars start to wink out.

There is no mantle. Instead, there’s smooth black stone that keeps them from burning up when the baldish one throws too much wood on the fire. It gets warm and toasty, perfect for warming up socks and feet. Sometimes, the cook probes the dusty old piano to life with a wheeze and some gasping breaths. 

The rug has a stain where they spilld hot chcolate and a tear when the box knife wa dropped by the youngest. But is’s whole still and stops the cold from soaking up all the happiness in the room.

There are two staircases just out of jumping range at the back of the living room. The first goes down the basement. It’s a nice basement, painted happy colors. The washing machine is down there, and the dryer, so when anyone goes down there in winter they always bury themselves in the warm clothes mountain.

The up stairs is curved in a spiral. The excitable ones like to slide down the banister, but everyone else scolds them - what’ll happen if they fall and get hurt? It’s steps are soft wood, the warm kind, the worn kind. The banister is metal, all twisted up in pretty spirals.

The upper floor is a long corridor with doors on one side. Their handles are all th old metal kind that rattle whenever anyone takes too hard of a step. In the mornings, people tumble out slowly, unless the funny ones decide to wake someone else up. Then the plaster shakes, the glass inthe picture frams rattles, the whole house wakes up.

If it’s sunny, the leader likes to go to the backyard. It’s a nice yard, with trees good for climbing all along the back and a tangled knot of grapevine drowning the fence, and more grass than the front.

If it’s rainy, the sleepy one will open the coat closet and poke through eons’ worth of dust and memories mixed up with the coats and shoes of today.

They all know that, one day, they’ll need to leave this house they call home and make another in the world for themselves. 

The world may be callous, but it’s wonderful to know they belong here.


End file.
